Rose Hill attends the national finals at RAF Wittering

A very early start saw Abi, Rufus and Sam head off to RAF Wittering with Mr Izzard and Mr Mansfield. Once we cleared security we entered the main competition hangar. We couldn’t believe how many people there were and all the different activities we could do as well as make our rocket car. Her Royal Highness Countess of Wessex arrived and spent the morning watching the cars being made.

The teachers were banned from helping us and had to stay behind a yellow line during the competition. We quickly shaped the body for our rocket car, Jimmy the Flamethrower, and we fitted our custom made laser cut wheels and carbon fibre axles.

We got a chance to look around the STEM village and we all had ago at making a gas turbine blade. The naval officer in charge couldn’t believe how good our turbines were. He saw us at the end of the day to say we had beaten everyone that day. The RAF bomb disposal was pretty cool and they had some massive robots on display.

Everyone was transported to the other side of the airfield where the rocket cars were to be fired. There were loads of different aircraft we could look in and around as well as an armoured Land Rover.

There were 60 rocket cars and they were fired off in batches of 5, ours was in one of the last runs. During this time, we had air displays from a Tutor, BBMF Spitfire Mk X and Typhoon. Our rocket car wasn’t quite as quick as a Typhoon, but it went well and more importantly didn’t fall apart!

HRH Countess of Wessex presented the awards to the top three cars, unfortunately we were not one of them. The winning car managed 66mph over the 15m track and Jimmy did just under 40mph – there is work to do done for next year’s competition. As HRH finished her speech the Red Arrows screamed right over the top of her and did an amazing display including drawing a giant 100 in the air to mark the RAF Centenary.

On lundi, vingt-cinq juin, the annual journée francaise got underway with pupils arriving in the customary bleu, blanc, rouge. Year 7s set up the bureau de change in the Quad as eager pupils exchanged Pounds for Euros before morning registration.

Year 6 pupils from Rose Hill School have scooped a hat trick of prizes winning second, third and runners up in the national John Lewis Innovation Challenge. The task was to reinvent a school blazer and give it a new life.

Rose Hill School today celebrated the official opening of their new indoor pool with a visit from the Rt Hon Greg Clark. The sun shone and the pupils provided an excellent drum roll for the ribbon cutting ceremony.